Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Writing for the Opinionator, a blog for the New York
Times, philosopher Justin McBrayer notes
(HT: HBL) and comments on a
curious feature of the Common Core Curriculum mandated in government
schools: It drums the false notion into children's skulls that there
are no moral facts. After laying out his evidence for the claim,
McBrayer considers some of the consequences of this kind of
indoctrination:

The inconsistency in this curriculum is
obvious. For example, at the outset of the school year, my son brought
home a list of student rights and responsibilities. Had he already
read the lesson on fact vs. opinion, he might have noted that the
supposed rights of other students were based on no more than
opinions. According to the school's curriculum, it certainly
wasn't true that his classmates deserved to be treated a
particular way -- that would make it a fact. Similarly, it wasn't
really true that he had any responsibilities -- that would be to make
a value claim a truth. It should not be a surprise that there
is rampant
cheating on college campuses: If we've taught our students for 12
years that there is no fact of the matter as to whether cheating is
wrong, we can't very well blame them for doing so later
on.

Indeed, in the world beyond grade school, where adults
must exercise their moral knowledge and reasoning to conduct
themselves in the society, the stakes are greater. There, consistency
demands that we acknowledge the existence of moral facts. If it's not
true that it's wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one disagrees,
then how can we be outraged? If there are no truths about what is good
or valuable or right, how can we prosecute people for crimes against
humanity? If it's not true that all humans are created equal, then why
vote for any political system that doesn't benefit you over
others? [links in original]

As noted at HBL, McBrayer does not comment
on how one could
learn a moral truth, but his piece remains a loud wake-up call and
a clear demonstration of the folly of central "planners" -- who are
human beings quite capable of error -- determining what children
should be learning on a national scale.

Does future society benefit from more trials and fewer convictions? That may be an open question for some people, but What remains certain, is that dumbing down a public endowed with inalienable rights makes government work much easier an maintaing rights much more difficult.